Our Summer Sabbatical

Our family has embarked on the beginning of our Summer Sabbatical. We are the recipients of a blessing twice over. In the first place we are blessed by the generosity of our congregation, Marion Mennonite Church, Chambersburg, PA, in receiving time and support for a sabbatical period of three months which we have chosen to take this summer. Secondly, we have been blessed by a Pastoral Sabbatical Grant from The Louisville Institute ( http://www.louisville-institute.org/Grants/programs/sgpldetail.aspx ) to fund the plans we had hoped to be able to accomplish during this time.

We've chosen the summer since the rhythm of congregational life is a bit lighter over that period, and the girls are out of school so we can enjoy as much family time as possible. After pastoring at Marion for 5 years, which has been my first full-time pastorate, we have begun to feel some of the toll that this vocation can take on a family if stressors aren't monitored carefully and balance isn't maintained. We are so thankful for the chance to hit the "reset" button as a family through our varied experiences together this summer. The timing feels as if it couldn't be better.

The largest one component of our plan is a trip to La Ceiba, Honduras for the whole family to study Spanish through an immersion experience facilitated by Centro Iternacional de Idiomas, a Spanish language institute. This will happen between June 19 and July 13. We have several other whole-family activities and several solo and part-family experiences planned. We will likely lay out our itinerary in some way on the blog, or else you can just follow along as we go.

The theme I chose for my sabbatical grant proposal is "Seeking Shalom: Finding the Path, Leading the Journey", and an excerpt from my proposal follows so you can get a sense of the rationale for my sabbatical plan.

My theme of shalom-seeking grows out of an emerging awareness that my life, like many, does not fully reflect God’s design and desire for our lives. If God dreams, I’m convinced the dream is for all of creation to once again return to the state in which it was created, which God called good. This goodness was, and will be, characterized by a life of wholeness and peace. A peace that goes beyond what we generally settle for, that is, the absence of conflict, but rather the peace that grows out of right relationship. I understand God’s vision of “rightness of relationship” for humanity to be deep and multi-faceted and includes all our relationships; not only with God’s self, but also with one another, with creation and with ourselves. This dreamed-of picture of wholeness and right-relatedness that we see throughout scripture is best summed up in the Hebrew word ‘shalom’.
The four facets of shalom that I hope to assess and address in various ways over the course of my sabbatical are in my own relationships to God, to others (in this case, my family), to creation and to myself.

The rationale for the goals of our whole sabbatical (and the motivation for my work in the Church) is that "We can’t lead someone on a journey that we’re not on ourselves."

Well, this first post is getting long enough, but hopefully it helps set the stage for what we are doing and what our goals are. As we go along this summer, we will post updates periodically, as we have time, so that you can keep up with where in the world we are! We will likely take turns writing submissions, and we'll try to remember to sign them so you know whose ramblings you are reading.

Signing off for now,
Carl